Looting creating chaos in Iraq

Sunday April 13, 2003 06:44

by Firas Al-Atraqchi - www.NFTF.org

A Country Without Order

After four days of looting and plunder Iraqis are beginning to question where the freedom they were promised has disappeared to. Arab analysts who have taken to the airwaves claim that the Iraqis have awakened from the dizzying euphoria of an Iraq without Saddam and are now faced with an Iraq without order.

Report by YellowTimes.org
NewsFromtheFront.org

TORONTO (NFTF.org) -- Iraqi sources in Baghdad have sent a general call to Iraqis living in Jordan not to heed what they call "western-controlled media." The sources have claimed that many of the looters who were caught by armed citizens of Baghdad spoke Arabic in a dialect not common in Baghdad or the outlying towns.

One Iraqi citizen told Al Jazeera that Kuwaitis were looting universities and other institutions, although this could not be verified. He called on U.S. forces to prevent the widespread destruction of Iraq's history and culture.

"They [U.S. forces] have two choices," he said pointing a finger at the camera. "Either they effectively run this country and bring order to the land, or they will leave it in coffins, defeated in shame. This is not over. The war has not even begun," he warned.

Anti-American sentiments are running at feverish peaks in Iraq. After four days of looting and plunder Iraqis are beginning to question where the freedom they were promised has disappeared to. Arab analysts who have taken to the airwaves claim that the Iraqis have awakened from the dizzying euphoria of an Iraq without Saddam and are now faced with an Iraq without order.

Baghdad's former police force has heavily criticized the orchestrating of a meeting between them and U.S. forces.

"They want to give the impression that the Americans are actually doing something to curb the chaos," said an Iraqi police colonel to Al Jazeera. "Can you imagine they made us go home and change into our military outfits just to show off our colors to the foreign press saying 'here are the police'? Nothing happened in the two-hour meeting. They wouldn't even let most of us participate."

When asked by a SKY News reporter how the looting can be put down, retired U.S. General Jay Garner, selected to be civil administrator of Iraq, said: "In an American term, we are just going to move the ball down the field a little bit at a time and when we get there we will score a touchdown and go home." He chided the press and said U.S. forces should be given some credit for securing Iraq's wealth, the oil fields.

Arab analysts appearing on Al Jazeera and Arab Radio & Television have taken Garner's statement to indicate U.S. callousness towards the Iraqi people and its designs for Iraq's oil.

While Garner was comparing Iraq to a football game, "A mob ransacked a psychiatric hospital in northern Baghdad...two patients unable to swallow water without assistance died of thirst and four women patients were raped," according to Agence France Presse (AFP).

Meanwhile in Mosul, fierce fighting has broken out between Arabs and Kurds. The majority of Mislawis are Arab and fear a Kurdish-inspired form of ethnic cleansing.

YellowTimes.org correspondent Firas Al-Atraqchi drafted this report.